I was born into a Disney menagerie with not a single goal.
It is 1967 anybody with an amp could have an ambitious hallucination.
When I wake from the cell of my dressing room, I feel the bird’s flight
in my body. The wing pang, lifting heave, locating itself above
my slumped shoulders and shoveling vines with my single voice.
It’s just a voice, brunette with bangs, floating, dirigible,
ready to explode
but can’t. So I snatch a pair of drumsticks and love
their suspicious feel
in my hands. Secretly, I want to smash glass.
I hate the color of an obedient deed so why do I sing its octave?
Notes that open in compassion, ribcage propped apart. My heart
lodged too close to my ribs. I’m a tree-limb steady in a high ball
generation of acid and Joplin slang.
From the surface of a mirror, my body emits hues
of yellowish orange. I hear the click of distasteful tongues
disturb my perfect silence. The motion of twirled knitting sticks
and the way yarn licks the air as it snarls towards me.
The crocheted mass, an exquisite dangle from my lap.
That’s the music that’s mine. I don’t want sex, just synchronicity.
There is a stadium grace when I sing. Sand and the streets
breathe the same cacophony of sing-song jangle and station wagons.
I’m able to fill a cavity
with a 4/4 drum riff wedded
with the throat call of longing.
The camera adds 30 pounds. But pounds of what?
30 pounds of silverware
30 pounds of fan mail
30 pounds of stroganoff
My heart beats so fast I enter slumber. I hear
the winged timpani in my chest. I enter a sleep . . . A black note
floods the swollen roof of my mouth, an empty beehive home,
a Los Angeles suburb . . .
If only the skeleton of a girl like the white key of a withering
piano
could sing. An ambulance siren . . . that bird’s contralto.
My mother picks me up. Karen, I’m sorry . . .
The clock of attachment stops.